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Name Address City ZIP APAC E.:, :-s * other Americans have worked behind the scenes to foster political unity, but, as usual, they have received little more than bLJnd promises, and all the old divisions have remained. One of the main causes of discontent was the go v- ernrnent's action in taking Thich Tri Quang, the mIlitant Buddhist leader, into custody; this kept the Buddhists he represents as antI-government as ever, and thus restrained them from joining the National Salvation Front. Militant Catholics have also stayed out of it, and so have the representatives of the Cao Dai sect. Many of those who are reluctant to join the Front charge that it is dominated bv former aides of the late Ngo Dinh Diem, by pro-French fonctionnaires, or by leaders of the old-line na tionalist parties. "W e have been engaged in salvation for twenty-five years and have ' heen treated by the same doc- tors with th e same medicines. What we need is some new ones," one critic of the Front has said. Many of the Front's organi7- ers are northerners, who have tradi- tionally been mistrusted by-and, in turn, have mistrusted-southern groups such as the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao. An organization that calls itself the Re- ligious Citizen Front and claims to rep- resent most of the Hoa Hao and the Cao I)ai, and the militant Buddhists and Catholics as well, has refused to join the Front and has issued its own appeal for unity, but the government has refused It permission to hold a meeting. All in all, it seems impossible, even under conditions of the gravest urgency, for the various factions and groups to get together. " :' '0:- ,"> O NE aspect of the continuing Com- munist political offensive that wIll almost certainly acquire increasing importance is a tie-in that Hanoi and the National Liberation Front have es- tablished with some of the neutralist Vietnamese leaders in Paris and in Phnom Penh, Carnbodia, and also with a number of Vietnamese in Saigon, in- cluding some in and around the gov- ernment, who may he thinking in terms of a possible accommodation with the N.L.F. and Hanoi. This development is clearly related to the attempts that the CommunIsts made during the Tet offensive to establish new front "alh- ances" and "committees" in Saigon and Hue as the nuclei of new local govern- ments. Like everything else about the offensive, the links with Paris and PhnorTI Penh were prepared wIth gl e.-:lt subtlety and cat e over a period of many rTIonths, and they apparently have at least an indIrect connection with the French policy of wanting to see the Wd.r here ended, the Americans sent scuttling, and the f--rench given a chance to reëstahlish economic and po- litical ties with their former Indo-Chi- na empire. The over-all plan is said to ha ve called for neutralists het e and abroad to come together after the T et offensive had paralyzed the country and estabhsh a kind of "mid- dleman" neutralist govern- ment, which would receive the hlessings of hoth Hanoi and the N .L.F. and would ne- gotiate for peace. After that, there would be a comp1ete takeover of the new coalition by the N.L.F. and the Lao Dong ( Communist) Party of North Vietnam. Several Vietnamese known for theIr neutralist leanings oJ.(-\.. converged on Phnom Penh from Paris at the end of ] an uary, and arrived in Saigon just before the T et attacks. At least two of these men held high positions under Diem, but another, in terestingly enough, was Pham Van Binh, the former gov- ernor of what is now North Vietnam during the pre-Diem regime of Em- peror Bao l)ai. Two years ago, I have been told, Hanoi urged Bao Dai to re- turn to South Vietnam from his exile on the Riviera, possihly as a memher of a neutralist interregnum. Bao Dai, who in 1 945 coÖpera ted for a short tim with Ho Chi Minh, refused, but the Com- munists m;ght we]] decide to make another offer along these lines now, as part of their new strategy involving neutraEsts. Those who look for ornens ha ve been especially struck by the sud- den arrival in Saigon of a dozen or more French correspondents. I have been told that the French business com- lTIunity here held definite know1edge that some important Communist ac- tion would take place at T et, and that many of them 1eft the country tem- porarily or sent their families out. \V"hatever took place among the Communists during the long months of pre- Tet planning, it seems certain that a numher of the men who came to S.-:ligon unohtrusively ( and with the obvious permission and approval of someone in the government) were to have played significant roles if the Comm unists had achieved their maxi- mum goals during the offensive. As things turned out, the COlTImunists .,<\ \ " \ y / / ,.... I 1 ,